Curator-in-residence

The NTU CCA Singapore Residencies programme is an integral part of the NTU CCA Singapore’s mission as a research centre and hosts artists, curators, critics and scholars from Singapore and abroad. The studio-based Residencies programme is dedicated to facilitating the production of knowledge and research for and by established and emerging artists. It serves as a forum for cultural and artistic exchange in Southeast Asia, augmented with public events Residencies: Insights / Studio Sessions / OPEN series, ranging from open studio sessions, lectures, live performances, to special projects in The Lab, NTU CCA Singapore’s space for curatorial experimentation. The application for residency at NTU CCA Singapore is via nomination, please email NTUCCAresidencies@ntu.edu.sg for more information.

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Márton Orosz

Residency period

1 February – 7 February 2017

About

Márton Orosz (Hungary/Germany) is Curator of the Collection of Photography and Media Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts and the Acting Director of the Vasarely Museum both in in Budapest, Hungary. He has recently curated Hungarian Artists and the Computer (2016), Time Landscape. Alan Sonfist and the Birth of Land Art (2014), and Film Experiments Brought to Light (2014).

He earned his PhD in Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He has been Terra Fellow at Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., United States, and György Kepes Fellow for Advanced Studies and Transdisciplinary Research at MIT, Cambridge, United States. His publications range across the history of photography, film, and collecting. His essay on Gyorgy Kepes’ Polaroid experiments appeared in AR – Artistic Research (Walther König, 2013). His study on the 1930s European abstract animated film industry was published in Regarding the Popular. Modernism, the Avant-Garde and High and Low Culture (De Gruyter, 2011).

Focus

While in residence Márton Orosz will further his research on György Kepes, the Hungarian-born artist, designer, educator and theorist who founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1967 as a “brainstorming laboratory” for artists and scientists to bridge the gap between art and science and address the social responsibility of design. He will explore the trans-regional connections of Kepes’ theories in Southeast Asia to shed light on the values shared by painters, designers, and architects who came into contact with Kepes and maintained a similar interest in the ecological consciousness and art’s capacity to trigger social transformations. Orosz plans to interview Choy Weng Yang, a seminal figure in the Singaporean art scene who visited Kepes in 1973, and to conduct archival research at the National Library and at the National Gallery Singapore.

Public programmes

Residencies Insights: György Kepes and the Agency of Interthinking. MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies as the Gatekeeper of a Universal Utopia. Lecture by Márton Orosz (Hungary/Germany), Curator-in-Residence

Márton Orosz’s lecture will address the holistic and concept-oriented approach of György Kepes and his understanding of art’s capacity to foster social transformation as a collaborative effort. A painter, designer, photographer, urban planner, curator, art theorist, editor, and educator, Kepes established the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at MIT, in 1967, as a think-tank for artistic agency. Orosz will discuss his visionary programme and utopian project to reconcile the “two cultures” in the Cybernetic Age, revealing some of the Center’s lesser known visual practices that aspired to reach a higher synthesis of human integrity by exploring the relationship between the media and the senses. He will also map out the trans-regional circulation of Kepes’s ideas on the integration of art, science and technology, positioning Southeast Asia as a significant catalyst of Kepes’s legacy.

Márton Orosz’s lecture will address the holistic and concept-oriented approach of György Kepes and his understanding of art’s capacity to foster social transformation as a collaborative effort. A painter, designer, photographer, urban planner, curator, art theorist, editor, and educator, Kepes established the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at MIT, in 1967, as a think-tank for artistic agency. Orosz will discuss his visionary programme and utopian project to reconcile the “two cultures” in the Cybernetic Age, revealing some of the Center’s lesser known visual practices that aspired to reach a higher synthesis of human integrity by exploring the relationship between the media and the senses. He will also map out the trans-regional circulation of Kepes’s ideas on the integration of art, science and technology, positioning Southeast Asia as a significant catalyst of Kepes’s legacy.